Is It My Scars?
by ThirstOfFire
Summary: Where'd all the romance go, I wonder, he said, right before she hit him over the head with the butt of her gun. Joker/OC/Batman. and yes, someone dies before the last chapter. p.s- skip chapters three and five, i think. rest are ok.
1. Chapter 1

**IS IT MY SCARS?**

**Chapter One**

There was a man in a clown mask on the sidewalk, and so Ray stopped in her tracks.

The street was quite deserted except for huge halogen lights, one model in a black sweeping evening gown, and a harried production team. Work was underway for an upcoming fashion week cover-shot, and the overly temperamental designer was starting to look unfashionably flustered.

'Why did you _stop_, Ray? You're supposed to pause and do the three-second pose over _there_, not _there_! Alright, let's do it again, people. More shadow this time! Yes, hold it like that, Carlos, now Ray…..are you listening to me? Ray? Ray!"

The model turned her head to him abruptly. 'Quiet!'

Swaim's mouth fell open inelegantly. 'What?'

She turned her head back, watching the man on the corner. The otherwise empty street hummed busily, and only the two of them stood still, each looking at the other mutely. Any second now, he would turn away, go away, but she _knew_ he was there, she just didn't know _why_…….

Swaim flapped his hand in front of her face. She jerked her head back, twitching her brows at him, and as she glanced back, she saw the clown had gone. Suppressing the knot of unease in her stomach, she turned and gave Swaim a cool smile.

'I'm sorry, darling; I was distracted for a minute there. You were saying about the pose?'

Swaim went into another explanation of the entire sequence. She listened carefully this time, blanking out everything else except the lights, the empty street, and the feel of thousands of dollars worth of silk swishing down her body. Smoothly she strode to the end of the street, paused, jerked a superbly arrogant shoulder at the sideways camera, and turned with a flurry of skirts. Her cherry-red lips gleamed dully in the lights, giving off the precise shade that Swaim loved so much this year, and the shoot was done. Another few thousand bucks in the bank for my game, she thought, and almost smiled.

Swinging around the corner in her steel Lamborghini half an hour later, she narrowed her eyes at the dark roads and thought carefully about what she had seen. The block had been closed off for the shoot, and the designer had publicized the entire process well from beforehand, so anyone still on the streets at that time was hardly a random sightseer. The man looking at her had been looking _for_ her. Without being narcissistic, she was aware of her own exotic looks, enhanced by layers of makeup for any and every shoot, but only a very stubborn admirer – and she wasn't aware of any such – would go to such lengths to see her. And while a clown mask might be freely worn in any part of the world at any time, in Gotham City there was a special significance involved, especially after recent events. Only a henchman of the evil madman, the Joker, would wear such a thing – anyone else would be too disgusted or afraid to risk it. Which meant that not only was _he_ aware of her – well – extracurricular activities, so to speak – he had actually _sent _his people to –

The realization made her swerve violently. 'Oh, _fuck_.'

About an hour later, she was on the other side of town, fiddling with a pen in her fingers and staring at the table top while a gray haired man in a check suit droned on about crate-sizes to an audience of about fifteen other people.

'The crates are coming in, but too late. Dock regulations say they gotta be smaller so the boys can carry 'em, else we need winches. But we've never needed winches for these before, and now we gotta pay off the dock inspectors on all three shifts. We could shift the whole operation downriver, but that's Mr. Hughes' territory. With all due respect to Mr. Hughes, maybe we can come to an agreement that works for both of-'

'Or maybe,' said Ray, 'You could just get smaller crates.'

A subdued guffaw swept through the room. Marone curled his lip and looked expectantly at the man in the check suit.

'Could we do that, Esa?'

Esa was sweating around the collar. It was clear that this solution hadn't occurred to him. He said nothing.

Ray took pity on him and drawled out slowly but distinctly, 'Don't worry about it, Esa; you're not the first person here who tried to rescue a cat from a tree by burning down the entire goddamned forest. All you gotta do, you gotta order smaller crates that the men can lift on their own, and henceforth not only are you obeying dock regulations without the winches, no trouble to Mr. Hughes here, but you're clear with the inspectors too. You'll be their golden boy, Esa, so clear that you'll be practically legitimate. Would you like that, Esa?'

Marone glanced quickly at her. She hadn't taken her eyes off her pen now for the last ten minutes. He waved a hand at his men at the doors, and slowly the people around the table started getting to their feet and moving out with firm handshakes and low murmurs. Ray got up without making eye-contact with anyone, swept up her idle laptop, and zipped it up into the bag. Flexing her fingers, she was about to stride out the door herself when Marone caught her eye. She sank back down in her chair with a mental shrug.

He sat back across from her, very much at ease here in his centre of operations. She held his gaze steadily, wondering what she'd missed.

He was the one to break the silence. 'What is it?' he asked, languidly.

Her gaze didn't flicker from his. 'What should it be?'

His mouth tightened. Never answer a question with a question, she remembered belatedly, and shrugged in apology.

'I was thinking about something I saw earlier,' she said, and was rewarded with a lift of the eyebrow.

'There was a man at a photo-shoot today. He was wearing a clown mask. I was just wondering if-'

Marone's brows furrowed. 'He's supposed to have been put away. In Arkham-'

'And if he's out?'

Marone shifted slightly in his chair. 'If he's out, then there's nothing I can do.'

'Should I be worried?' she asked.

'You're a model who plays stocks and shares on the side,' he shrugged. 'On the face of it, he has very little respect for either looks or money. Scars one and burns the other, so you should be fine.'

'I meant should I be worried that someone who knows me told his people I – ah – work two jobs? Because only yourpeople know _that_, .'

He smiled at her. 'You don't trust me?' It was tantamount to a challenge and she knew better than to push it. Instead she moved on to matters of more importance.

'The Scanlon shares are dipping further. I want to wait a few days before I buy in, but before that I need to finish with that furniture company you wanted to sell. I thought you might want to keep the warehouses so I haven't inked the deal yet, but if you want to clear it all out the Broxton guys have a package figure for you. I can call it up if you-'

He stopped her as she would have pulled out her laptop again. 'I trust you to get me a fair deal on this. Keep the storage space, but for rent. Call Joseph Gray in New York, tell him I'm willing to buy his stock, and make arrangements for shipping. Leave the cargo deal to Esa, let him talk to Hughes' people about this thing, and if you talk to that guy from Wayne Enterprises again, see what you can find out about their labtech programmes. I trust you on this,' he said again, and she wondered what the hell that was about.

'I have to go to work tomorrow. I'll call about Gray later, and Fox is supposed to see me in a few days. I'm buying Wayne shares myself, by the way. They're going to go up soon. Should I cut you in?'

Marone grimaced irritably. 'Ten percent commission if you do. Handle it on the shipping books, make sure it's clean. No paper.' He reached for a drink.

She got to her feet, waving down his offer of Scotch with a polite negative, and was out of the door before he thought of anything new. Make arrangements for shipping, _Christ_, do I look like a concierge? Down the thirty something floors on a swift elevator, stroll to the car, rev up to sixty in three and finally she had time to think about what Marone had said to her as she turned to leave.

'If the mad dog breaks free, do you want me to put him on a leash for you?'

Everything was so _confusing_ today. What did he mean by putting the mad dog – presumably the Joker – on a leash? She'd thought the Joker was outside anyone's control, acting as a fiery catalyst to violence and destruction all on his insane self, but then why did Marone not think so? Maybe they had a deal, some kind of understanding? And if that was true, then Marone was even more dangerous than she'd thought before, and she'd be all the better skipping right out of town. Also, he'd said 'on a leash for you' and Ray wasn't sure whether that was an implied threat or not. She was aware that Marone had men watching her, he didn't trust her or her expertise with money, he probably kept tabs on her just to prove he really did own Gotham, but could he really send the Joker after her if she did him wrong? She wasn't part of the almighty Family yet, was trying very hard to stay on the fringes, but sooner or later she knew there would be a test of her loyalty. Put one foot wrong and she would be floating downstream with a weight tied to her ankles in no time. At best. What was the exchange offer on keeping the Joker away from her, then? What was she supposed to do to appease Salvatore Marone, head of the Falcone crime family and kingpin of the Gotham Mafia?

Breaking into a cold sweat just thinking about it, she stepped down on the accelerator and zoomed down the highway to her apartment on the West Bank.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

[A/N - OK, I brought out the next chapter, even though the last one didn't get too many reviews….readers, tell me what you think of my Joker!! Suggestions WILL be taken into account for following chapters…..read, review, and suggest things you'd like certain characters to say or do…..I'm not writing this just for myself but for all the other TDK fans out there, so if I can make you guys happy, that puts a HUGE smile on _my_ face….love, everyone! Read and enjoy :D]

**Ray fell asleep as soon as she hit the bed. Waking up after what seemed like only a few minutes, she realized that her unease had not left her overnight. Scrubbing her eyes with her knuckles, she stumbled around her apartment while she was getting ready, flicking an occasional interested glance at the stock exchange updates pop-up on her laptop. Canned juice up, ketchup down, corn up, oil up, shares for Wayne Enterprises down….no surprises there, she thought, stuffing a glamorously over size handbag with her things. Forty minutes later she was sitting in the make-up trailer of a commercial for diamond jewellery makers Swanson Éclat, and the model next to her was eyeing her shoes with exaggerated jealousy.**

'**They're perfect,' crooned Carlotta, her eyes darkening with envy. 'I'm in Grecian sandals too, but yours look so-'**

'**Kinky,' finished Ray. 'Two sizes too small and the straps will leave bruises for tomorrow. At least I'm getting paid well.'**

**Carlotta carefully smoothed out her lip-gloss. 'I'm completely broke, as always. Where does all my money go? Not even a thousand in the bank as of this morning-'**

**Ray privately thought that Carlotta would do better without her incessant Ecstasy fixes, but she discreetly handed over five hundred dollars without a word all the same. Carlotta might be a step removed from junkie, but she was a useful source of information regarding important people and events. And Ray needed contacts like that like she needed air to breathe. Her life revolved around being at the right place at the right time. Her lips twisted at the thought, and she was quite glad to slip away from Carlotta's overly bright chatter and take her turn in front of the camera.**

**The shot showed her silhouetted against a fake city skyline, wearing a delicately flowing toga-like dress and a Swanson Éclat necklace. The dress left one shoulder bare, and her hair was arranged so that tendrils brushed her bare neck and ears. The necklace was a gleaming chain of diamonds encircling just the base of her throat, with a single chain of platinum falling from the front and dipping one sparkling diamond down past her clavicle. The dress was in theme of a modern-day goddess, the diamonds were exquisite, and her feet hurt like hell. Fifteen interminable minutes later someone yelled 'That's it!' and she rose to go, letting an assistant remove the necklace as she rotated her neck muscles. There was a beep on her Blackberry.**

'**Meet me tonight?' she read, and tried to remember if she had ever seen the unidentified number before. Apparently not, as the digits rang no bells. Someone with the wrong number, probably, she thought, and texted back to say just that. **

**There was a reply in under a minute. 'Not a mistake, no. I just wanted to see you smile. The diamonds suit you.'**

**Whoever it was, was **_**watching**_** her? Ray rose on her toes to sweep the room with a cursory glance, knowing perfectly well that her stalker would stay out of sight. 'Who is this?' she typed out, sending it abruptly on its way.**

'**You looked beautiful last night, too. Like a swan princess of the night.'**

_**What?**_

'**Have we met?' she sent, scrambling around in the tiny trailer to get changed and clean the make-up off.**

'**I'd like to, angel. Ten minutes too soon for you?'**

**Ray stared at the screen for a full minute before flipping it shut and heading out to her car. The alarm bells in her head were ringing hard enough for her to make for the highway at full throttle. As she zoomed down to the docks for her meeting with Broxton and his men, a black truck loomed up in her rearview mirror. She swerved to the right to make room, but the truck didn't take the opening. Instead it came up so close behind it was practically nudging her bumper. She couldn't see the driver's face, just his arms and hands, and she waved him exasperatedly forwards. In reply, he slammed into her car from behind.**

**The Lamborghini went spinning around on the road in a screeching reflex of tires and steel. Ray's hands were shaking on the wheel in shock, and ten seconds had passed before she thought to look up. When she did, it was to see three men climbing down the back of the truck, which was now blocking her car from view of any passersby. She stepped on her gears and nothing happened. **_**Damn**_**.**

**Reaching for the automatic revolver in her glove compartment, she gave the men a pleasant smile. 'Can I help you, gentlemen?' she asked inquiringly, revolver cocked and out of sight behind her knee.**

**One of them opened her car door for her with exaggerated courtesy. 'The boss would like to take a ride with you, ma'am.'**

'**Is that right?' she said, and she was positively purring now. She stepped out of the car in a sinuous stretch, all heels and trench coat and coal black hair, and pointed her gun at the closest of them, waiting for him to try and grab her hands. Sure enough, he tried to tackle her, and only stopped when she grabbed his hair, slammed his head on to the hood of her car, sliced another one's calf open with her stiletto heel, and hit the third on the temple with the butt of the gun. Backing away from them, her eyes kept darting to the driver of the truck, who'd been drumming his fingers on the wheel all this time. He didn't look familiar at all, and the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach intensified. She knew every single 'boss' in Gotham City, by sight at least, except- except-**

**Well, there was this one guy who'd been put away before she ever set foot in this city. And it looked like he was the one driving the truck that just trashed her extremely expensive car. Ignoring the three men now feebly getting up from their positions on the concrete, she stalked towards him, revolver aimed firmly at what she could see of his torso. Closer, closer to the driver side, until she had to step back hastily when he flung his door open and leapt down right in front of her. She blinked as she saw his ghoulish face for the first time, recoiling from the manic gleam in his eyes. Moving back a step, she took in the long purple coat, the outlandish make-up and the stringy green hair disbelievingly.**

'**Is this a joke?' she asked, and immediately regretted the impulse.**

**The Joker whooped with laughter, but she noticed his eyes didn't change at all. Clutching his side in mock-hilarity, he straightened up and looked her up and down, practically ignoring the gun pointed straight at him.**

'**Well, aren't you pretty, angel? What's Marone thinking, letting you out on your own?' he said, sucking in his cheeks as he looked at her. 'If I were him I'd lock you away and **_**never**_** let any of the other guys even see you……I mean, they might just want to **_**steal**_** you away from me. Am I right or am I right, angel, hmmm?'**

'**You -' she stopped, realization hitting her, 'You sent me those messages.'**

**He cocked his head at her, still smiling. Was he smiling? It could just be the scars. Ray considered her options. She could try to make a run for it, but she was outnumbered four to one with a useless car. She could try to take them all out, but then the police would almost certainly get involved, and she'd be damned if she called in any favors from Marone. And third, she could just-**

'**Mr. Joker,' she said affably, pocketing her gun, 'Pleasure to see you. I believe you wanted to meet me?'**

**His mouth stretched into a smile, a genuine one this time, and he sketched her an odd little bow. 'Nice to meet you, ma'am,' he crooned in a high-pitched, sing-song voice, 'Isn't it a lovely day?'**

**Ray slanted a quick look at the cloud-laden sky, grey and impressive in its vastness. Maybe the weather had something to do with her recent obsessive worrying. 'It's beautiful. Did you want to make an appointment with Mr. Marone?'**

'**Is that what you do?' he inquired politely, 'Field Marone's calls?'**

'**No, but I can tell you how to contact the guy who does do that. I mainly just handle the money.'**

**He locked his glove-clad hands behind his back, hunching forwards as he did so. **

'**What else do you – uh - **_**handle**_**, angel?' he said quietly, and Ray suppressed the urge to slap him.**

'**Well, I get to sleep with all the big guys in turn, and if I'm very good at it I get a bonus on some of my commissions,' she said chattily, and watched his eyes darken with - something.**

'**That's good, that's good,' he nodded quickly, raising his eyebrows. 'Beauty and brains, angel, and a mean roundhouse punch too? Your hair's lovely,' he added, reaching out to touch it. She jerked back and stilled, her jaw clenching, her breathing a little heavier than before. He laughed.**

'**Well, I gotta run, angel,' he said flippantly, clambering back on to the truck. His men had somehow gotten there too without Ray noticing. 'Give Marone my love, would you?' he shouted at her, putting the truck in reverse, and in a minute he was gone.**

**Ray dragged in a deep breath, standing there alone on the highway beside a wrecked car with a sharp storm on its way. At the moment, she would have traded five years of her life to know just what the Joker thought he was playing at. In the meantime, she phoned for a cab and kicked her heels by the side of the road until the tow-people arrived.**

**________________________________________________________________________**


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

**[A/N – **This is a bit of background to describe how Ray got her job in the first place. I'm actually uploading the next chapter too at the same time, so that readers get a taste of the Joker every time I post  Please, review. Make my day, people! Enjoy – more to come shortly.]

**Ray was still leaning against a milestone at the side of a road when Marone drove up in his usual Hummer twenty minutes later. Getting out smoothly, he motioned to his driver to stay put and strolled over to her.**

'**What happened?' he said, his eyes roving over her.**

**She shrugged. 'The Joker's back. No big deal. How did you know?'**

'**He had someone call me. Told me to drive over and pick up my missing property.'**

**She stiffened. 'He put it like that?'**

**He didn't answer, but his eyes narrowed as he saw the wrecked mess of her car. 'Are you hurt?'**

**She glanced up at him, surprised. 'No, I'm fine. I had it insured.'**

'**Of course you did. Need a lift?' he asked, and his hand went to her elbow. She let him steer her to his car and sat docilely in the back with her hands folded in her lap. Marone got in on the other side and nodded to his driver. Soon they were off the highway and on their way downtown and Ray's eyelids were drooping with sleep.**

'**I have to reschedule with Broxton,' she murmured in a low, sleep-laden voice. 'Got an appointment with the Fox guy, though, on the road just now, and….' Her head dipped and she straightened convulsively rather than show weakness. Marone draped his arm along the back of the car seat and smiled wryly down at her, stroking her shoulder slowly. **

'**Sleep,' he said, 'I'll wake you when we get there.'**

**Alarm bells should have gone off but didn't. Ray wondered hazily why she'd ever mistrusted Marone when he was obviously so sweet, so – and then she fell asleep.**

**Marone watched Ray drift off into sleep and settled his arm more comfortably to cradle her closer. She'd worked for him for than a year now and never appeared more vulnerable than she was at the moment. She was a rare find, this one, full of quickness and wit and leashed danger, yet he supposed it was the chauvinist in him that found the sight of her helpless and trusting in him irresistible. The fact that the Joker was back didn't surprise him, he'd never thought Arkham could hold him forever, but he didn't like the mad dog sniffing around Ray. **_**Any man worth the name would try to take her from you, **_**he remembered the clown saying, and frowned. The Joker had a point, but Marone knew he had to move slowly. To force his Ray into anything would be at the risk of killing her independence, he thought with unaccustomed tenderness, and vowed never to let that happen. She would be safe with him, protected from the mad dogs of this world. He would shower her with gifts and jewels, give her anything she wanted, and in time she would come to feel for him what he felt for her. His mouth curving at the thought, he looked down at her sleeping face, lashes shadowing on her cheeks and her cherry lips softly pouting up at him, and felt a kick of desire as she nestled closer against him in her sleep, making a soft murmuring sound from the back of her throat as she turned into his shoulder. She was so lovely, so adorable like this, so different from the intimidatingly witty, clever, beautiful and strong woman who cut power deals when she wasn't gracing the pages of glamour magazines or training at the fight club. She was powerful and driven, her hunger for success and her intellect matched his own, and in this moment it felt as though she already belonged to him. He bent his head slightly and inhaled the scent of her hair, breathing it in deeply.**_** Soon**_**, he thought**_**, soon**_**, and smiled openly.**

**When Ray woke up, it was in her own bed with the covers drawn over her, her coat gone and her shoes pulled off. Groaning with belated embarrassment, she rolled out of bed and immediately checked every security point in her apartment. After taking a prolonged shower, she emerged feeling somewhat more human and discovered that it was still late afternoon. Taking advantage of her free time, she cancelled her plans to go clubbing with a couple of her modeling friends that evening and started to research the Joker and his doings on her laptop.**

**Some ten minutes later, she sat back, appalled. From what she had heard previously, she'd assumed the Joker was another random crazy thug with an affinity for anarchy. What she hadn't expected was the level of intelligence he seemed to possess. Take any one thing he did and it looked like it was completely unplanned and senseless. Put everything together and one got a sense of a plan so fiendish, so cunning, it would blow the mind just speculating on its scope. What most alarmed her was the way he manipulated people's emotions and actions, the way he was able to engender mass hysteria in Gotham, even the way he used the media to project his image of himself as a lunatic. Being a realist, she was sure that he did what he did for any combination of money, power, or sex. But he had a sense of humor too, this scarred man; a twisted, perverted, unreasoning, cruel, dark sense of humor that would allow him to sacrifice everything for the sake of a piece of irony. And it was that unpredictability in him that frightened her. Because for the first time she got a faint sense of why everyone was so terrified of the Joker; and it wasn't because of his scars.**

**And now she had to decide how to deal with him. In the meantime, there was the little matter of how Marone had presumably arranged for someone to stash her away in her own bed without waking her. She would have to thank him for that, and see about a new car…..and then there was the meeting with Fox later, and possibly an art gallery opening she was required to attend sometime over the weekend……and of course, everywhere she went she would have to keep looking over her shoulder for the Joker's spies from now on…..**

**Feeling a headache coming on, she fixed herself a mild drink and settled down to engage in one of her favorite things – chancing her luck on the New York Stock Exchange. Her investments all seemed nice and steady, cruising along like canoes on sluggish waters, and a couple of her risks were paying off nicely, a little later than she had predicted, but with greater dividends. Humming under her breath, her fingers typed, clicked and scrolled gracefully as she lost herself in the world of numbers and money.**

**She wasn't an ascetic by any means, and she greatly enjoyed the luxuries that her money could provide for her. The fact that she earned it all herself, had clients who trusted her to handle her investments, took chances to play the game, was exhilarating to her. The modeling was just something that started half-way through college for her, to help pay off tuition fees and let her parents go ahead with their big plans for a brand new house. From local advertisement gigs she'd moved on to doing TV commercials, but then she got 'spotted' and in recent years had restricted herself to runway shows and exclusive shoots – just enough to provide capital for her more risky financial ventures. Most of her very substantial modeling fees were piling up and multiplying in a Goldman Sachs equity fund, and it was the hefty amount of money she earned working as a financial and stock consultant that paid for her lifestyle, the money she sent home to her parents, and her occasional charitable whims. **

**In her early twenties still, she could be called extremely rich, even if you didn't count the money she made writing and editing for a literary magazine, which was negligible in comparison. Most people knew her as a highly-paid runway model; some, including a select group of family and friends, knew that her degree in journalism had also landed her a job with a well-respected and suitably authentic highbrow magazine that had moderate political leanings and an established readership among the literary elite of the country; and only her clients knew that she was a financial-tech wizard, manipulating and forecasting the trends of the shares market to make a killing in stocks almost every single time. **

**And that had begun purely by accident, when the last recession had hit. She was a teenager at the time, and had blithely remarked to her parents that low was always the time to buy, following it up with a series of well-reasoned and knowledgeable arguments. They recommended that she put her money where her mouth was, and a year later she did exactly that, using the money she earned tutoring primary school children to make a modest but successful fortune out of magnesium-alloy shares. The money had gone towards paying for distance-education for a couple of impoverished cousins, but Ray learned an even more valuable lesson – namely, that money is power. It was a lesson she never forgot, and when one of her colleagues on the reviewing board at the magazine where she worked fell into debt with the Mob, she was the one who offered to pay off his loan. Sean was so grateful that he had her contract extended for five years, even though she didn't even have an office desk in the building and usually sent in her articles, reviewed written matter and made her notes through her email account on the magazine's website. Overwhelmed with his thankful generosity, she took the initiative to pay off the loan in person. She'd wangled an invitation to a dinner hosted by a businessman with known Mafia ties and hoped to hell the man Sean had told her about would turn up. Sure enough, he was there, a greasy Slavic character looking completely out of place in the elegant ballroom.**

**Watching this man as he skulked around the room, she had suddenly understood what real power meant. This man was not distinguished, not sophisticated, and not even passably handsome. Yet people gravitated to him, these sleek, rich people fawned on him as though he were a kind of celebrity, simply because of the pull he was rumored to possess with the Gotham Mafia. His name was touted in connection to the great Falcone family themselves and Ray spotted at least seven men packing poorly disguised guns guarding his every move from strategic points in the area. It was not difficult to get near him, but she could hardly say 'Hello' and stuff a wad of cash in his hand. A more subtle approach was called for, so Ray had her hostess's stripling of a son switch her dinner place around so she was at a table near her target. **

**The besotted boy insisted on a dance in exchange for the favor, and spent most of it furtively pawing the back of the corset of her dress and breathing heavily into her bare neck and shoulders. The figure-hugging, slim, ankle-length gown of green silk and frothy black lace was most definitely exquisitely beautiful, but hopelessly unsuited to withstand clumsy fumbling. Ray glanced around the room, concealing her distaste under a mask of cool poise, and encountered the Slavic gentleman's eyes on her. She held his look for a fraction too long, and he lifted his glass to her in a silent salute. Within seconds, her partner was gently but firmly disengaged from her arms by a large thuggish brute of a man and her target was loping across the room to her, taking his place with a sardonic flourish. She gave him a polite smile, arching an eyebrow in enquiry and he gave her a lopsided grin in return.**

'**I have saved you from that one, and now you must dance with me to- to- express your thanks to me,' he said in a guttural voice, and she gave him a light laugh in reply, very aware of the envelope stuffed full of cash in her evening clutch, just a few feet away from them, sitting on a handy chair. Cursing her luck – but then who the hell carries their bag on to the dance floor – she barely noticed when he swung her around behind a pillar that made a convenient alcove cut off from the rest of the room. Leaning his forearms on the wall either side of her, he leaned in close, grazing her cheekbone with his stubble as he murmured in her ear, 'I saw you watching me before. I have a car outside if you want to go, but I have to leave soon. What will it be?'**

**She smiled up at him, her eyes hard and glassy, very conscious of the dangers of offending this man. 'I have a message for you from Sean Riley.'**

**He straightened up slowly. 'Yes.' It was a statement, not a question.**

'**I have the money with me now. In full, with interest and his apologies for the delay.'**

**He moved away from her, looking suddenly disinterested, and asked neutrally, 'He sends you – why?'**

**She looked at him and decided to tell him the truth. The decision would change her life.**

'**It's my money, actually. I got lucky with some investments lately, and since he's my friend……'**

**Five minutes later, Ray was on her way out, the money delivered to him while he sat at his dinner, slipped discreetly between his napkin and the wine for the first course. She had not mistaken the gleam of interest in his eyes when she told him about her knack for money, and if she was right about him, she would be receiving a visit from some new friends in the near future. Maybe even tomorrow. And thank **_**you**_**, Sean. **

**Ray had been called many things in her time, but cowardly was not one of them. So when a contingent of serious-looking men in skivvies turned up at her door the next day, she felt barely a moment's hesitation before accompanying them down to their car. Not a single one of them leered at her, unusually for Gotham mobsters, and she spent the thirty minutes of the car ride singing 'Hakuna matata' inside her head while her escorts stared studiously out of the tinted windows. She had an excited, bubbly feeling inside her chest, like this was the beginning of something for her. She was no fool when it came to the ethics of businessmen, being fully aware that the protection racket was sometimes the grip that governed a city better than the official administration could. She also suspected that having a legitimate stocks advisor to move money into the black was one of the most convenient assets the Mob could have. And this job could open doors for her; get her in contact with the movers and shakers of the financial sector, set her on the road to being a millionaire stockbroker herself when the time was right….unless of course she'd merely been called in so they could kill her or extort from her…..but somehow she didn't think so. She wasn't rich enough to be milked, not dangerous enough to be 'taken care of', and unless she'd completely misread the Slavic gentleman from last night and he had indeed been offended enough to exact revenge on her, she should be in the clear. Twitching her shoulder-muscles, she felt the blade of a broad kitchen knife press against her ribs and shifted slightly. She would almost definitely be frisked for guns when she got there, wherever it was, but she doubted whether anyone would detect the knife inserted below her stiff ribbed corset top. Feeling optimistic, she hummed contentedly to herself, drawing a curious glance from the gangster next to her, until they finally reached their destination.**

**When the car drew up in front of a nondescript-looking office building, there were already guards stationed outside, ready to check out the newcomers. Ray held her arms very steady when one of them patted her down, not even flinching when a hand slipped much too close to her butt. Raising her eyebrows, she gave the man a cheerful wink and a one-dollar bill, murmuring 'Keep the change,' loud enough so that the men standing around smirked at him. Striding in, she tried to appear as innocent and naïve as possible, knowing that she was fooling no-one. Sometimes, however, the act was worth it just to be outrageous.**

**The room she was told to wait in looked like a nice, modern boardroom except for the two huge gorillas stationed at each end, each packing shotguns and at least two hundred pounds of raw muscle. The long oval table had chairs scattered at odd intervals around it, and she lowered itself warily into one. After ten minutes of a staring competition with the closer of the two gorillas, a man walked in and the questioning began.**

'**Your name is Ray. Do you have a last name?'**

'**No.'**

'**Just Ray?'**

'**Yes.'**

'**You're a model and you invest money, yes?'**

'**Yes.'**

'**And you play on the Stock Exchange?'**

'**Yes.'**

'**All right.'**

**Silence.**

'**Who sent you here?'**

**Silence. Ray looked at the man and smiled slightly, an 'I-know-something-you-don't' smile, purely to distract him.**

**The man narrowed his eyes at her. 'Who told you how to find Ivan Dankovitch?'**

**She smiled again, a million-watt smile with the promise of danger in the eyes. He blinked and then recovered.**

**Banging his fist down on the table suddenly, 'Who are you working for? **_**Who**_**?'**

'**I work for no-one. Only myself.'**

**The man eyed her tumbling fall of hair, the glossy, made-up mouth and the expensive designer shoes, clearly disbelieving. 'You gave the boss Riley's money. From your own pocket?'**

'**Yes.'**

'**Why?'**

**She leaned forward, opening her eyes wide, and breathed, 'Honestly? Because I always wanted to meet a real-life crime boss.'**

**The man nodded in mock-acceptance, curling his fingers into a fist on the table-top. Without warning, he got up and left the room, slamming the door as though it had done him a serious personal injury.**

**Within minutes, the Slavic gentleman from the night before was in the room, flanked by three more men. Treating her to a cursory appraisal, he drummed his fingers on the table, eyeing the ceiling speculatively. Swiveling his neck, he made direct eye-contact with her.**

'**You came here. Why?'**

'**Should I not have?' she asked, trying not to blink. 'I thought you wanted me to.'**

'**I did. It was stupid of you, though, not knowing what I want.'**

**Ray cocked her head at him inquiringly, eyes wide and bland. 'You would like me to model your fall/winter collection?'**

**He raised his eyebrows.**

'**Well, that's one of my jobs. And since you look like you don't have the faintest idea what silhouettes are in this season, I'm going to go ahead and assume that you'd like to talk about stock options. Unless of course you'd like me to review the version of the Great Czechoslovakian Novel that you're undoubtedly writing, in which case I can also help you out with a few handy editorial tips.'**

**Dankovitch rocked in his chair, a completely blank expression on his face. Ray could almost see the cogs turning in his brain. Finally he straightened up, and so did she, aware that he'd made a decision.**

'**Prove this,' he said. 'I will have everything you need brought to you. Show me what you do.'**

**Before she could even nod in acceptance, one of the gorillas was setting up a PC in front of her. She watched him for a while, and then remarked, 'Did you know the blue wire goes on the left? The way this is now, there's a real possibility the monitor could begin printing out pages of BASIC on its own.'**

**The man glared at her and put the antiquated keyboard down with a 'thunk'. She gave him a cheesy grin, reached around the back, and hooked up the audio and video herself. Dankovitch was beginning to look bored by now, and she had no intention of disappointing today. This might be the most unconventional job interview she'd ever been to, but goddamn was it **_**fun**_**!**

**Within minutes she was on the main server, watching as cuboids zoomed past a giant Wayne Enterprises logo. 'What would you like me to do, Mr. Dankovitch?'**

**He nodded towards the screen. 'I want to see what they are doing.'**

'**You want me to hack this?'**

**He lifted an eyebrow. 'What else?'**

**She could see where this was going, and she didn't like it one bit. 'I'm sorry if I misled you, **_**sir,**_** but that's not what I do.'**

'**What is it you do, then?'**

'**I **_**invest**_**. Legitimately. If you want to see how Wayne shares are doing in the market, how much you should sell or buy, when you want to know why oil goes down when gold goes up, if you want to move your – funds – into viable, legal operations and still minimize your tax-returns, that's where I work for you. You want to hack the Wayne server, you walk downtown anytime after seven at night, pick up any random teenage punk with a laptop and a pressing need for money, and voila! That's done in under twenty minutes. Better yet, just find a Wayne employee in tech-support or customer-care and fucking well **_**bribe**_** them to tell you the password. You don't need me for this shit, Mr. Dankovitch, sir.'**

**She could tell he was startled. Oh joy. If only he'd start taking her more seriously now, her happiness would be complete.**

'**The man you work for,' he said, abruptly switching tacks, 'He is knowledgeable about technology and financing, yes. But he knows nothing if he thinks that by sending someone in his place he can hide from me. We have ways to watch you, follow you; see where you go, who you meet-'**

'**And when you have me followed, you will find that I go nowhere, do nothing that leads back to anyone. It could all be a conspiracy, of course, but the sad truth is that I'm all alone in this world, and when I get paid, the only cut there is goes to the government of the US of A. I also pay a sizeable monthly donation to the 'Save the Whales' foundation, but even you can't accuse a giant blue oceanic mammal of masterminding a plot to steal from the Gotham mafia.'**

**There was dead silence in the room. If a pin had dared to drop in that atmosphere, it would probably have been shot down by five guns, bent out of shape, and sent to the scrap metal heap. **

**Dankovitch smiled. It was not a pleasant smile.**

'**I believe you. Thousands wouldn't.' Tossing a key in the air, he caught it and threw it her way. She clapped her hands together, catching it neatly, and looked at him with a question in her eyes.**

'**The key to the back door. Sometime in the next week. If you're busy with something, drop it at once, because Marone waits for no-one. Sergei here will pick you up. That's all.'**

**Ray did an internal handspring. 'Thank you for the opportunity, sir,' she said with a straight face, turned around smartly, and got the hell out of there. **


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Five**

**[A/N – **Right, this one's for all the TDK fangirls (and boys) out there. This is the Joker at his most intense and passionate, but unpredictably so, of course. Please, review. Much love, guys. Enjoy! *fingers crossed*]

**Looking back, Ray was still surprised it had been that easy. At the time, she thought maybe Dankovitch was going to stake a claim on her, as a mobster would put it, and the whole interview thing was just a precautionary gag; made easy to look easy, so to speak. But since then she'd sat in on most of the business meetings they'd had, and she'd never been approached by any of the men she worked for, not one single time. Apparently one of the perks of working directly for Marone was that no-one ever tried to invade her personal space. She was there, she worked on the assignments they wanted, she gave her professional advice when asked, and that was it. Outside those cloistered meetings, they didn't know her and she made a point of not knowing them. Of course there were rumors about gunfights and turf wars and things like that, but she kept her head down and worked unobtrusively, trying to stay away from that side of things. She'd been right in her assumption, too, that this job would open doors for her. Slowly she noticed that she was getting 'referred' to people she'd never met on the basis of her one client, until eventually her clientele expanded to include at least a dozen high-profile accounts scattered among the city's elite. It helped, of course, that people usually followed the advice of her first and most important client if they knew what was good for them. It also helped that her conscience was by and large easy going enough to allow for the occasional homicidal lapse in judgment on the part of the Mafia.**

**In the meantime, her modeling gigs were taking up so much of her time that she began to cut down on them. This created the impression that she was 'reclusive' and 'mysterious' and suddenly her fee-range shot up astronomically. Fate can be a real bitch, she reflected a year later, when a Page 3 columnist did a profile of her three-pronged career as a model/magazine columnist/stock-analyst. Not that there was something unusual about being snapped by the scandal rags, but when they actually started to remember a model's **_**name...........**_** all things considered, she needed to keep her head down, and increasingly frequent trips to New York to handle business there on behalf of her clients served her purpose well enough. She was vain enough to ego-Google herself once in a while, but now that the Joker was back she fully realized how dangerous any information about her in the public domain could be if it landed up in the wrong hands. Gotta do something about that soon, she thought irritably, upset for no better reason than that Brockway Timber seemed to be going down, contrary to her predictions. She twisted her mouth exasperatedly at the screen, almost at the exact same second her doorbell rang.**

**Loping over to the door, she leaned her forehead against the paneled wood to see through the peephole. Most inconveniently for her, there appeared to be a purple gloved finger blocking her view of the corridor outside. Ray backed away from the door, with that sinking feeling in her stomach yet again, the one she'd come to associate with nasty surprises and death threats. Reaching for the land phone to her left, her hand froze when the door shuddered on its hinges. Her visitor seemed to be kicking her door down.**

**Ray retreated to her bedroom and emerged at a stealthy pace, shotgun loaded and ready to go cradled in her arms. The door still juddered from the impact of the man on the other side, but she waited patiently, standing with her back to the light and legs braced for the first attack.**

**The door's upper hinge gave. The frame swung open with a depressed creak, and the Joker stepped through. He was alone this time.**

**He blinked as he entered, screwing his eyes up comically against the glare of the strong lava light she'd deliberately lit close to the door. From the shadows beyond the lamp, Ray's aim never wavered from his forehead. He couldn't see her and craned his neck in pretended confusion, acting so blasé that she couldn't decide whether to shoot him or beat him over the head with the lamp. Eventually, after thirty seconds of intense, soot-eyed canvassing of the room, he decided he'd had enough. The Joker looked around one more time, shrugged elaborately, and put a bullet in Ray's ceiling.**

'**What the hell was **_**that**_** for?' she shrieked in rage, painfully aware of her landlord's rules about remodeling and reconstruction in the place. 'I was standing right here, do you have **_**any**_** idea how much that scrolled plasterwork is going to cost me to replace?'**

**He grinned at her, squinting through the light as she vaulted over the sofa to better inspect the damage. 'Ah come now, angel, how was I supposed to know you were even at home?'**

**She looked down from the ceiling and was shocked half to death to find his face only inches away from hers. Heart racing madly, she noted that his teeth were the filthiest set she'd ever seen. Her eyes couldn't leave his scars alone, though, torn and jagged lacerations stretching his mouth into a cruel parody of a grin. His eyes were blood shot and the stringy green hair smelled terrible, like paint cans recovered from garbage dumps. The tic at the base of his neck was twitching madly, and for a moment she wondered whether he was on drugs. Certainly that would explain the schizophrenic behavior and maybe even excuse the murder OCD……..but when he easily twisted the shotgun out of her slack grasp and wrapped his left hand around her throat; well, that was when she began to suspect that something else was terribly wrong.**

**His fingers moved slowly on her neck, squeezing experimentally at various pressure points. She almost retched in pain and blinked in disbelief at him. 'You're actually going to **_**kill**_** me?' she said, her voice hoarse but still sounding incredulous. 'I take your messages, I completely forget to report you to the police for holding me up at gunpoint on the highway, and now you want to murder me?'**

**He snarled an obscenity at her, red eyes daring her to try anything more, but she brought up her fist and punched him in the jaw anyway. He stumbled back very slightly, giving her the time to pick up the closest thing to hand, which was an ornamental table clock featuring Harlequin and Columbine as the minute and hour hands respectively, and hit him over the head with it.**

_**Take that, clown**_**, she thought viciously as she watched him curl up on the floor in pain, **_**and that, and that**_**, smashing the clock several times over his head as he stood up again, but this time he kept on coming at her. Finally he grabbed her wrist, so hard that she thought her bones might break, and shoved the clock out of her grasp. She wrenched violently at his grip, kicking at his shins to free herself, but he did nothing but squeeze her wrist tighter until she drooped with pain and exhaustion, her long black hair falling over his forearms and hers like a curtain. Her body sagged, and he muttered 'No, no, no' very softly, dragging her around to the sofa and pushing her down on it. As soon as the cushions softened her fall, he was there, kneeling on the floor in front of her, arms boxing her in on either side as she shrank away. **

**Pushing the hair off his face, he gave her a pseudo-friendly grin and said, 'Can we talk now, angel? What's that?' She nodded slightly, afraid of making any sudden moves. 'Here we go, then,' he said cheerfully, and she winced at how raw his eyes looked. 'In today's game of model Jeopardy, the word is **_**Mafia**_**,' he drew the word out, 'and the question is, what should pretty young things avoid at-all-possible-costs?'**

'**You?' she whispered, and got her hair yanked back by the roots for her pains. He towered over her, all whipcord muscle and psychopath eyes, and said, 'Let's have an instant repeat of that, shall we? The word is money, and the question was who did it belong to. Any guesses, angel?'**

**She frowned at him through the smarting tears of pain in her eyes. 'Why do you call me that?'**

**He twisted his misshapen mouth, wrapping his other hand around her bruised wrist. 'Because you look like you're not one and I **_**like**_** that,' he hissed, his eyes going to her lips. She opened her mouth to reply but let out an involuntary gasp instead when he buried his face in the hollow of her neck. He said something, his scarred lips moving against her pulse as he growled into her throat. She used her free hand to try and push him away, but somehow her hand met his shoulder and then stilled, clinging to him as he nuzzled his way up her throat and around the jaw line. Her mind was curiously blank and her body felt pleasantly light all of a sudden. A very soft moan escaped her lips as he let go of her wrist and pushed his hands up under her tank top. His lips reached hers, and then, suddenly, they were kissing. Tentatively and then deeply, the rhythm picked up pace as the room started spinning around, and he was lying on top of her as she lifted her arms and wound them around his neck, encouraging him as he shifted to move closer to her…….**

**Some time later, he lifted his head, lightly bit the underside of her jaw, and asked, 'Would you go now, if Marone called you?'**

**She sat up as though struck by a bolt of lightning, staring at him with horrified eyes. He could tell she hadn't even heard his question, she was so astounded at what she'd just let him do. Smiling slightly, he watched her scramble up from the sofa, running her hands through her tumbled hair as she did so. 'Holy **_**shit**_**,' he heard her whisper, and his smile broadened. He stood up to go to her, easily catching and trapping her against the wall when she would have moved away. He tightened his grip on her shoulders and slammed her against the wall when she struggled. Now she was staring up at him with big dark eyes, well-kissed, swollen lips and messy hair, looking like she couldn't believe this was happening to her. On impulse he bent and claimed her mouth again, and when he let up she was clinging to him to stay upright, her fingers playing with his hair, that bewildered expression in her eyes again. He lowered his head to her ear and growled, 'If you say that was a mistake, I'll kill you.'**

**An involuntary laugh escaped her, and her eyes lost some of that confused look. 'I didn't say anything,' she said, 'And if I had, it would have been about how I never do this kind of thing normally, and now, and with you, is an extremely bad place to start.' **

**He grinned at her, and some of the reddish gleam in his eyes was gone. He even looked younger, more human, and she wondered briefly what he'd looked like before the scars. As soon as the thought crossed her mind, he cocked his head to the side and asked, 'What?'**

'**I'm just counting the ways you repulse me,' she told him, her fingers moving from his hair to his neck and slipping inside the collar of his coat. He arched his neck back into her hands, cracking his neck muscles as he stretched, and her fingers traced patterns across his collar bones. 'You'll get used to the scars,' he said, his eyes closed, and her hands stopped moving in surprise, then started again. 'Yeah, the make-up and the psychosis have nothing to do with it, I'm sure. **_**Oh **_**– ' as he pulled her roughly against him at those words, and her eyes drifted shut, too. He ran a hand down her thigh and back up again, turned her around with him, pushed her against the dining-area sideboard and lifted her to sit on it so that they were on the same level. They didn't break the kiss, but her legs were lifting and wrapping themselves around his waist; his hands were cradling the small of her back, and now he was making sure she couldn't count anything, couldn't **_**think**_** of anything when he moved against her like that…….**

'**I think I've gone mad,' she said into his hair after a while. They were on the rug in front of the fireplace now, and he was exploring the contours of her ribcage in exquisite detail. Her head fell back and her hips rose off the floor in an undulation of pleasure. Above her, the Joker licked his lips with exaggerated emphasis, making her laugh again. 'I didn't mean mad like that – not that you really are insane, come to that, but considering I just met you for the fir-'**

**The Joker sat upright with a jerk, straddling her as he frowned fiercely. 'I **_**am**_** crazy, you know,' he drawled, his flippant tone at odds with the cruel grip of his hand on her wrist. **

**She opened her eyes and looked up at him quizzically, ignoring the pain. 'Do I really look that stupid? You know and I know you're not crazy. As an image, if it works for you, that's fine, you know? But-' she never finished that sentence. He pulled her up by the hair, so that now they were sitting face to face and his hands were thrust into fists at the base of her neck. Shaking her, he growled, 'Then what am I?' into her ear, his scars grazing her cheek. **

**She slid her hands up from his hips to his chest, curling her bruised wrists into his lapels. 'Let me tell you what I think you are, and then if you find I'm wrong you can tell me what **_**you**_** think,' she suggested, eyes gleaming with invitation. Against his will, his mouth opened to breathe the command 'Tell me' against her cheek. So she smiled up at him, and then she began to tell him.**

**­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­________________________________________________________________________**


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

A Week Later

Over on the other side of town, Bruce Wayne, CEO of Wayne Enterprises, was conducting some private business of his own. Hunched over the table-top, he crooned, 'Smooth and easy….that's right…here we go….hell, yeah!'

The object of his affections was a modified sniper rifle, custom-made to certain of his specifications. What used to be a relatively straightforward piece of weaponry was now adjusted to allow for grappling hooks, mercury-tipped bullets, and even the occasional bash over the head. It weighed far too much now, but, reflected Bruce, slap on some titanium alloy instead of the lead casings on the bullets and there we go, no problem. Turning his attention to more pressing matters, he looked up to find his bottle of the finest single malt whisky completely empty. He scowled at it.

As the millionaire playboy Wayne, his image was damaged beyond repair, and a few rumors of alcoholism wouldn't affect him at all. But it was the blurring of his senses that disturbed him when he went out at night, that disorienting slowness that accompanied the slow but steady diminishing of his father's wine cellars. He hadn't become a drunken sot yet, he supposed, but now that Rachel was gone it was only a matter of time before he cracked. Yes, he loved Gotham, but the selfish truth was that he had loved _her_ more. Now that she was gone, there was just no point to anything any more. Dent was scarred for life, presumed dead, gone underground for months now. The Mob was back in business, crime rates were rising, and somehow the mood of the city had turned to unease. A madman had shown them how easy unreasoning anarchy was, and it had shocked people who used to consider themselves civilized. Now, where there used to be understanding, there was mistrust. Gotham was becoming a bad place to bring up children – who'd said that to him? Natalia…..Natalie…..Natasha….he couldn't remember her name, but he remembered the last time they'd gone out all too clearly. Harvey Dent with his shining, keen optimism, Rachel with her wary eyes and beautiful face, the two of them holding hands while _she_ refused to look him, Bruce, in the eyes….the memory made his fists clench, and getting up abruptly, he loaded and reloaded the rifle at least five times in a spectacular show of futility, not realizing that the barrel was jammed until he undid what he thought was the breech to reveal one of the grapple-hooks. Slamming down the gun in frustration, he stalked out of the cave in search of Alfred Pennyworth, his butler and friend.

The Joker, the Joker……the name resonated in his head, day and night, till he thought he would go blind with rage. They had locked him away, but not before the clown had taken away the things Bruce loved, one by one. His malice towards the Batman was such that Bruce doubted whether Mr. J, as he'd heard him called, was truly insane at all. There was a perverted, twisted kind of logic behind his every action; mad though he seemed, perhaps the Joker simply followed different rules from everyone else, or more accurately, he refused to follow rules, preferring to break them instead. Bruce Wayne had never tried to empathize with the mad Clown Prince of Crime, feeling, and rightly so, that he had enough to do simply trying to stop him. But since Rachel had gone, he'd increasingly regretted the impulse to let the Joker live. What he would give to be able to beat the life out of the other's body…his fists tensed at the thought, and Alfred turned before he could wipe his murderous expression away.

'Good morning, sir,' Alfred began, 'I trust you are well enough to attend the board meeting this morning? Mr. Fox specifically requested your presence, since the other directors are all concerned in the matter.'

Bruce shook himself inside, smoothing out his facial muscles so he didn't frighten his butler in the half-light. 'I'm due in less than an hour. While I'm gone, send for Bucholz and have him adjust the grip of the new rifle. I need it tonight.' He swung around and left abruptly, leaving Pennyworth looking quizzical and just a little sad. His footsteps died away in the gloomy hall, covered with dust-sheets now that Bruce refused to entertain any more, and Alfred shrugged mournfully as he threw away the soft, delicious scrambled eggs that comprised breakfast. In the distance, a powerful car revved up, and within moments Master Bruce was gone.

Lucius Fox cleared his throat and the room fell silent. One by one, the members of the board of directors turned their attention to him. The buyers' delegation was ranged out on the opposite side of the long table, and some of them looked impatient, clearly raring to go. The rest were expressionless, and Fox took this as a good sign. He smiled.

'With the permission of our esteemed CEO, Mr. Wayne here, I'd like to begin by wishing a very good morning to everyone in this room, and a hearty welcome to our friends from the Verenchetti Corporation. We've had extended talks and I'm sure you all know by now why we're here today, but let me run through one last time for the benefit of any newcomers.' He indicated the young woman in the black leather overcoat sitting near his end of the table, and several people around the board nodded at her. Ray gave a lazy smile in response, her fingertips surreptitiously stroking the underside of the table. Over the other end, Bruce eyed the length of her legs with deep appreciation. Drunkard he may be, but dead he was not, and though she couldn't hold a candle to his Rachel……the thought turned bitter in his mouth, and he quickly turned his gaze back to Fox, who was looking at him with a bit too much sympathy in his eyes.

'The Verenchetti Corporation has approached Wayne Enterprises with an offer that is more then generous, considering the circumstances. A block of Wayne shares will be held in trust by them, as well as bond and purchase rights, in return for their shipping services to the entire North-East, North, and North-West sectors. The deal already inked would be very profitable to both parties here, assuming that all directors on the board of Wayne Enterprises stand behind and vote for the motion, including Mr. Wayne himself, who, as you know, holds the controlling share of stocks. The formal agreement is already on the table, gentlemen, and a rough draft has been forwarded to each of you. If any of you have any doubts, please, don't hesitate to ask me.' Lucius Fox smiled around the table as though this was highly unlikely. 'I trust the terms will meet your approval. Thank you,' he ended, and sat down to watch everyone rifle through the pages that had taken six lawyers to get ready on time.

A Wayne director looked up and coughed. 'Forty five percent rebate on stock options for Verenchetti?'

Ray looked up and almost replied, but caught herself in time to let Fox field the question.

'In exchange for freightage for all consignments to any part of the North,' said Fox gently, and a hawk-faced man on the Verenchetti side of the table nodded. 'I think that's a fair deal.'

'Shared lab programme funding for a three-year period?' asked Bruce, his eyes clear as he stared Fox down. 'I wasn't aware Verenchetti had any research facilities at all.'

'We plan to,' said the hawk-faced man, responding on behalf of his team again. Fox silently noted that he was the spokesperson, but not the decision maker, taking cues from his left and right. He filed that information away for future use. To his left, the young, glamorous woman was flipping through the pages at a reasonably steady speed, pausing every once in a while to refer to a folder of printed notepaper to her side. The others on her team were barely even interested, preferring instead to engage in low-voiced discussion with each other. They seemed to be arguing on a point of the deal, but the decision was not reachable without further input, it seemed. Who makes this call, Fox wondered, hoping that the deal wouldn't be put off if the Verenchetti people had to return to their big bosses to confirm their decision. He'd spent too much time on this merger already, and Mr. Wayne was no help, what with his recent slide into depression because of Rachel Dawes' death and GCPD's relentless pursuit of the Batman. Lucius felt his age more every day recently, and hoped to God it didn't affect his business tactics.

Fifteen minutes had passed. The Wayne directors were still shuffling through their copies of the agreement when Ray closed her folder with a snap, rearranged her copy of the dossier, and pushed it across the table to Fox with a simple but clear 'No.'

Fox looked at her with a courteous smile, immensely taken aback on the inside. The Wayne directors and Bruce Wayne himself straightened with surprise written large on their faces.

'Miss Ray, you do not find the terms satisfactory?' asked Fox, flipping open his own dossier. 'I assure you, we have made very effort to accommodate your-'

He got no further. The Verenchetti people had pushed their dossiers away as well, doubtless as a sign of collective rejection. Clearly this Ray was the one calling the shots here, but try as he might, Bruce could not recollect ever hearing of a woman in the Verenchetti family business before. He was about to offer some placatory words of renegotiation, but then Ray leant back in her swivel chair, and things began to get interesting.

'We,' she indicated her side of the table with a sweep of the hand, 'are grateful, very honored, in fact, by this opportunity you give us today. But I have been trusted by my client, that is to say Verenchetti Corporation, Private, Limited, to secure the best deal possible. And I regret to say that what we have on this table today is so far from the concept of a good deal that my every business ethic is offended. I ask your forgiveness, but I cannot in all good faith agree to this. I'm sorry', she said seriously. And she dropped her eyes to the table, waiting for a response.

Lucius Fox spotted outraged faces around the table and sighed internally. There were ways and then there were ways to conduct business, but most of these doltish fools in their thousand dollar suits were too stupid to be familiar with negotiations as delicate as these. It was ironic that the only other man he could trust in the room right now was Bruce Wayne, who at the moment seemed to be looking at this Ray girl with more interest than Fox deemed healthy.

Fox raised a hand and gradually the babble that had broken out subsided. Ray eyed him with appreciation and said in a low voice, for his ears only, 'If I may suggest something? I have some – compromises - in mind for this agreement. But I would like these fools gone. Wayne should stay – we are talking about his family property – but please, send the others out. Then perhaps we can talk in peace.'

Fox recognized the veiled threat for what it was and realized that he had been hopelessly out-maneuvered. Within minutes, the room was empty of people. Only Fox, Wayne himself, Ray, the hawk faced man and a sullen looking older man from the Verenchetti side remained. Ray realized that Fox had moved over to Wayne and was flanking him. It was apparent from their body language that there had been a shift of power while she hadn't been looking, and that Wayne was the one she had to deal with now. Accordingly, she turned slightly to face him and her companions mirrored her actions, until the power dynamics in the room were firmly established. _How primitive_, she thought, and did a mental eye-roll.

'Ray – may I call you Ray? I apologize sincerely for this – misunderstanding – between us,' said Wayne, 'Tell me what I can do to repair the damage done here today.'

_Smooth, and clever too_, thought Ray, and gave him a brilliant smile. He blinked slightly and half-smiled and she thought – _he thinks I'm flirting with him. _Her inner exasperation intensified and she proceeded to try and rip him apart.

'Let us talk business, Mr. Wayne,' she said abruptly. 'What I read just now was a travesty of a financial agreement, and I think you know it. Please, be honest with me. What makes you think the house of Verenchetti will take an insult like this lying down?'

Bruce's eyes flared with temper. 'Do you have a choice?' he asked evenly. 'No business so closely associated with known Mafia figureheads has a chance of flying below the radar with deals such as this. It is necessary for the protection of the shareholders' interests and the company's reputation that all deals be transparent and-'

'This deal _is_ transparent,' she pointed out, holding herself on a tight leash_. Be calm, be cool. _'From my side of the table, it is also massively unfair.'

'Unfair how?' he said, dropping all pretence of friendliness. The hairs on the back of his neck were prickling. He always reacted this way to danger and unpredictability. Behind him, Lucius Fox shifted in his seat.

'You are assuming a great deal, Mr. Wayne,' she said slowly. 'You are assuming, for instance, that since Verenchetti has a certain – reputation - you are at liberty to exploit their weaknesses. But the truth is, Verenchetti has become largely legitimate. I will be honest with you – it was not always so. Yet it is proceeding towards honest dealings, and will continue in that vein as long as I continue to consult for the Managing Director. The intention behind this partial merger of shares was not to use Wayne Enterprises as a cover for more – ah – dubious activities, as you no doubt suspect, but to move further towards expanding _business _operations. I assure you, you have nothing to fear from Verenchetti. They will not exploit you, encroach on your territory, or use you in any way. They are men with a certain code of honor, which is more than can be said of many of the _legitimate_ people with whom you do business.'

Lucius sighed with relief inside. That this maverick deal-maker was willing to make a concession was as surprising as it was good news. Wayne Enterprises needed the Verenchetti money just now, and it looked like this pretty girl here was intent on giving it

to them. Such are the ways of the Universe, he thought, and leant forward, nudging Bruce's foot with his shoe. 'We fully appreciate your commitment to this deal, Ray. Now, as I'm sure Mr. Wayne here agrees with me, let's revise some of these clauses here, shall we?'

Ray nodded briefly, too angry inside to speak at the moment. Her Blackberry vibrated, long and incessantly, in her pocket, and she shifted slightly in her chair. Fox noticed but said nothing.

'Excuse me,' she said, her head starting to ache with the pressure. Uncoiling herself from the chair, she went over to the far side of the room to take the call.

**Guess who's calling? Oh yeah, it's the Joker, so review quickly and let me put up the next chapter pronto! And yes, I know I'm evil, thank you very much. Much love, guys.**


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Seven**

Snapping the phone open, 'What?' she bit out.

A pause on the other end, then a muffled cough. 'Where are you?' said the raspy voice she'd dreaded hearing. Frowning, she threw a quick look over at the table where the others were talking and found Wayne's eyes on her.

'At work,' she said. 'May I call you back after a while?'

Another pause. 'Who's watching?' he asked, and she twitched her brows in irritation.

'None of your bloody business,' she said, lowering her voice, 'And if you call me again, I swear I'll hit you where it hurts next time.'

'Are you angry with me?' he asked. She could hear the expectant laughter threading through his voice. It made her so angry that he could rule her thoughts like this. Not trusting herself to speak, she flipped the phone shut. It rang again within a second.

'No_, seriously,_' he said, as though there'd been no interruption, 'I want to see you again. I want to talk to you.'

'Is that what they call it these days?' she said, staring out at the vast skyline of the city through the glass wall of the boardroom. The steel towers mirrored the oppressive grey sky with their mirror facades, and even the surface of the water in the distance reflected that shade of smooth ash. The sense of never-ending distance drew her in, overwhelming her, making her want to drown in water for no reason she could remember. _Morbid, morbid_, she thought to herself, _he's making me crazy_. For some reason that thought seemed indescribably funny to her and half-hysterical laughter swelled up in her throat. There was a faint 'tsk'at the other end of the line, as though he could read her mind and was exasperated with what he saw.

'Listen, angel, not that I don't like chatting like this, but I'm actually calling on _business._

Marone called the other day, and by that I mean he sent a posse of _thugs_ straight to my door. Now, I enjoy stabbing and kicking and hitting as much as the next – ah – hooligan, but, really, there are limits to how much idiocy I can take in one week of coming back. So' – and he paused for emphasis – 'I want to talk to him about recruitment policies, if you know what I mean. Fix that up for me, there's a good girl.'

'Coming back from where, Arkham?' she asked, fingers splayed against the transparent glass. It was raining outside and thin rivulets of water on the reverse of the glass panel seemed to funnel through her hand. The entire conversation seemed unreal and unimportant to her. She thought about herself, a tiny figure with minute fingers reaching out to the storm outside, huge jagged streaks of lightning flashing against the darkening horizon of the sky. Thunder boomed ominously in the distance, and she closed her eyes from the sheer visceral pleasure of it.

'I was never _in_ Arkham, angel,' he drawled, 'But I could tell you some things about the seedy side of things if you'd like to know. Meet me tonight?' he asked, and she was reminded irresistibly of the first contact she'd ever had with him. Was that really only a week ago? It had rained that day too. She leaned her forehead against the glass panel, watching the movement of the swirling clouds outside from under her eyelashes. 'No,' she said, almost able to see his exaggeratedly puzzled expression at that.

'_Well_,' he said, 'Here I am, trying to do the honorable thing by you, and there you are, being all _angry_. What happened to taking a girl out after you've kissed, hmmm? Where'd the good old days of fluffy romance go?'

She smiled at the glass panel, amused in spite of herself. 'Let's rewind a bit, shall we?' she asked mockingly, 'The last time I saw you, you broke in and ruined the handmade plaster scrollwork on my ceiling, I smashed a huge damn clock over your head, and yet you somehow interpreted that as an invitation to make out with me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but nothing about that seems to call for a follow-up, of _any_ kind. And as for romance, don't make me laugh. What am I supposed to tell people, I'm dating a mass murderer who moonlights as a frickin' _clown_ in his spare time? Seriously, I think I'd rather be with the giant bat than with you.'

He chuckled darkly, the sound echoing in the earpiece. 'I won't tell if you don't,' he suggested, and she almost laughed aloud at the sheer strangeness of it all, talking to a known homicidal psychopath with a business merger taking place ten feet away. 'And what would it look like if you went out with the Batman, hmmm? Imagine going to a fancy place to eat and having to tip extra because the waiters kept tripping over your date's cape.'

'Well, imagine me going out with a man who uses more make-up than I do,' she retorted, eyes alive with laughter, and he laughed with her, stopping long after she did.

'Oh, that was _fun_,' he sighed, and she straightened her shoulders, giving herself a mental shake. There was no point being angry with him, he refused to take anything seriously, not even himself. But she was damned if she'd let him play her like a puppet.

'I had a new door put in two days ago,' she said. 'Beautiful mahogany paneling with a frame of reinforced steel. Good luck breaking in again.'

He clicked his tongue. 'But I thought you liked me,' he said plaintively, and she giggled again inside.

'You adorable psychopathic clown, you,' she said, making him snort, a gentle 'humph' that she interpreted as frustration at her sarcasm. 'I'll pass on the message to the Falcone clan, but that's about it. Goodbye,' she said, and disconnected the line, half-expecting him to call back again. Feeling unreasonably disappointed when he didn't, she returned to the papers on the merger, sliding her phone back into her coat pocket.

Bruce watched her return to the table, leaning over the papers himself. He noted her ability to switch off everything else and focus on the matter at hand, something he'd learned to master himself, and thought, _Rachel was like that too_. Ray was nothing like Rachel in appearance or personality. Rachel had been dedicated to her work, to Harvey, to justice, to himself, Bruce, when they were children. Strong, passionate, principled, beautiful, she had had that warmth and indefinable grace of spirit that Ray lacked. Ray was cold, he thought, calculating her moves to intimidate, to win. Her tactics were ruthless but effective, and Bruce knew that Rachel could never have overcome her scruples as easily as this woman did. This one was like a shark, cynical without any vestige of compassion, not someone he could feel any kinship to. Whatever her credentials were, she was very good at her job. Lucius had said that she also worked as a model, and looking at her now, he could believe it. Ray looked like she could and did use her appearance in her own favor, using it where nothing else would work to gain an advantage. He could picture her in different dresses, changing her expression and gestures to suit each different persona for the cameras. _Dangerous_, whispered his mind. _I know_, he answered back. _Good_. This meant that if he decided to – well, court her, for lack of a better term – he need have no compunction about ending it soon, as he knew he must. No-one would ever compare to Rachel, ever again, but if he could just forget, only for a little while……..

Ray, meanwhile, was completely distracted from the business at hand. Tracing the Wayne letterhead absentmindedly with her index finger, she kept thinking about _him_.

About how dangerous this whole thing was, how stupid, how- how- utterly insane, to be thinking of the Joker in these terms. _It's because he's funny_, she thought_, because he sees things the same way I do, he sees the ridiculous side of life and it amuses him, like it does me. But then I don't feel the need for murder and anarchy to prove my point, and I shouldn't condone it in him. I used to have a semblance of decency and self-respect. What the hell happened to me?_

She knew the answer to that one, of course. Working in the financial sector, being privy to the dirty secrets of some of the world's richest people, she'd discovered that hell had been on earth longer than she'd ever imagined. She'd seen millionaires concoct schemes to rip off the poor in Third-World countries, executives pore over contracts for hours to find the loopholes that would let them off paying out insurance to their middle-class policy-holders, politicians take bribes to stall this or support that bill regarding testing laws, taxes or export policy, and she knew as well as they did that they were responsible for more deaths and ruined lives than the Joker could manage in a million lifetimes. Wayne was probably no different; for all that he looked like a gentleman, she could see that world-weary look in his eyes that all rich men had, and she held him in contempt for it. _Does working for them make me one of them?_ She wondered, and decided in the negative. She was in this for the short-term, because she liked the money and the lifestyle and she was good at it. But she had no intention of spending her life making rich men richer, and neither did she want to play games that might end in her life being forfeited for the sake of a clever one-liner, which was sure to happen with the Joker. She had a vision of herself, three, maybe five years later, working peacefully as a fully licensed financial advisor, perhaps buying and selling government bonds, something stable, packing in the modeling and the fast life and settling down with a nice, normal, steady man, maybe even raising a family….she smiled with the optimism of youth and bent her mind to the finer points of the lab-sharing clause as detailed in the report in front of her eyes.

Bruce saw her smile secretly at the table and decided that her exotic looks would make her excellent arm-candy for social events in the near future. Resolving to ask her to dinner first chance he got, he looked ostentatiously at his watch and said, 'Well, would you look at the time? I think we've accomplished enough here today, gentlemen. The important thing is that we've reached a point where we can all agree on what we want and since the weather outside looks rather nasty, I suggest we schedule another meeting later this week. Unless anyone had any objections?'

Nobody had any objections. Ray noted that Luca Canjone, he of the hawk face, right-hand man of Rafael Verenchetti himself, looked satisfied enough to actually grasp Wayne's hand with both of his own and wish him a good day. Fox accompanied them to the elevators, pre-empting Wayne when he moved towards Ray, and waited for the doors to open.

Ray felt unaccountably cheerful as she stepped into the elevator, humming under her breath all the way down. Minutes later, she parted from the others with a warm handshake down in basement parking. Within fifteen minutes, she was racing a vivid yellow Peugeot down past Gotham City Square, waving cheekily at the other driver when she took a sudden U-turn and left him behind. The rain was still slashing down, but she didn't care, she loved storms, she loved the lightning, she loved the thunder, she loved the – oh, _no_.

_I did not just think that, _she thought_. It's been a long day, I'm tired and my thoughts are jumbled. Even if I did happen to think of the Joker in those terms by the most random of chances, it wouldn't be true, because I don't. No. I DON'T._

Having failed to convince even herself, she subjected the slippery highway to a sulky glare. If it was true, and her inner subconscious had fallen head-over-heels for Gotham's Clown Prince of Crime, then it could only be because of his dark mystique. _Think about this, _she told herself_, you used to know him only as a legendary alpha-villain who nearly destroyed this city and terrorized even the Batman. Then you researched his doings and began to imagine that you had some insights into his mind. You were impressed by his intelligence and his ability to manipulate the emotions of the people of Gotham, and by the fact that he wasn't doing it for money or even necessarily the attention, but just to prove a wacked-out nihilistic point of view. This seemed deeply ironic to you, and when you met him, you attributed qualities of humor and understanding to him which he probably doesn't even have. Which says a lot about your own fucked up perception of the world, but doesn't actually clear up this whole mess. Because now you think that because he smashed up your house and kissed you, that means something. What if it doesn't? What if he's just using you to get to Marone? What if he just wants your money? What if he has a crazy girlfriend or wife stashed away somewhere that no-one knows about? Most importantly, what if he really IS crazy and you've fooled yourself into thinking he's not because that's the only way you can justify this stupid infatuation? _

At this point her fingers were clutching the wheel so hard that her knuckles suddenly cracked on their own. Flashing a startled glance down at them, she wondered whether she really was going mad. The thought didn't seem as funny as it had barely forty minutes ago in Wayne's office. Now the cold was sending chills down her back and she was grateful for the enveloping warmth of her apartment when she strode inside a few moments later. She stripped off her coat and tossed it on to the couch to dry, then paused, hearing a faint scuffling noise from one of the inside rooms. _Maybe something got knocked over by the wind_, she thought, and was about to go see what it was, when she got another unpleasant surprise.

'Coffee?' asked the Joker, a steaming mug that she didn't even recognize in his outstretched hand, leaning so casually against the kitchen countertop that you'd think he was used to doing this everyday. And Ray stopped halfway in the act of turning on the light and froze, staring at him like she hoped she was asleep and he was just a bad dream.

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	7. Chapter 7

The curtains fluttered in the cold wind, sending away the immediate warmth. She realized that somewhere in the house, a window was open. There was even a taste of the earthy damp of the rain. She licked her lips involuntarily, and his eyes dropped to her mouth.

"You're here," she said flatly, appallingly conscious of everything she'd just been thinking. In the half-dark, his face was hidden. All she could make out was his taut form and the lanky hair. A car went by and the headlights flashed across the ceiling, revealing the harsh angles of his face as he watched her. She thought he looked – what? Expectant?

He raised his eyebrows when she turned away from him, switching on the lights and turning her laptop on as if nothing was wrong. Her tailored white shirt felt too tight, suddenly. She flexed her left shoulder. Behind her, he took a meditative sip of coffee.

"Ceiling's fixed, I see," he said, and her fingers paused for a second on the keyboard. She gave him a carefully blank look and he put the mug down, straightening himself. Then he was loping over to her, standing behind her as she went through her mail with studied nonchalance. She could hear him breathing on her neck, and suddenly nothing on the monitor was important at all. It blurred against the faint, very soft touch of his face on her hair. She jerked her head away and turned back to face him suddenly, willing matters to come to a head. But he only flicked a glance at her, up and down in a casual little look, his face impassive. One hand was in his pocket, fingering his knife, she thought. "You hung up on me," he said, and on reflex she shrugged lazily. She knew it was a bad idea the second she'd done it.

He reached out to her simply, no vestige of coaxing or forcing in the gesture, and twined his free hand in the hair at the base of her neck. She would ignore him, she would ignore him, she kept saying in her head. But he had her backed against a wall, there was no room to go anywhere, and any sudden moves meant he'd take out that knife in his pocket. She held herself still, her eyes watchful. But he did nothing, just stroked the nape of her neck softly with calloused fingers. She almost shivered, her eyes going a little wider. His thumb came around and caressed the throbbing pulse point between her collar bones, pressing down just hard enough to make her catch her breath suddenly. He smiled, but there was no humour there at all.

"Did you miss me?" he asked gravely. She blinked. His thumb went on stroking past her clavicle, and he wasn't looking at her face anymore, he was tracing patterns on her neck. She said "Of course not," in a very creditable imitation of indifference, and his eyes went back to her face. He looked speculative.

"I don't want you around Marone anymore," he said abruptly, his fingers stilling. "Or Wayne, or Verenchetti. Cut off contact. You don't need them anymore."

"I'm sorry, what?" she said through a dry mouth. She suppressed the urge to lick her lips. His forehead creased in a frown. "I'll work for who I want, thank yo-"

He jerked her head back by the hair, tightening his grip mercilessly and cutting her off mid-sentence. The cold wind made his coat flap slightly, and for a moment it looked like an enveloping, looming cloak. His eyes were beginning to burn.

"I don't think we've discussed this properly," he said pleasantly, and she winced but refused him the satisfaction of letting him hear her cry out. "You'll do as I say, because if you don't I'll make you suffer for it. And I'll do that because I claim that right to you. You may have done exactly what you please so far, angel, but you're mine now. And I don't take that kind of shit."

My brain must be numbed by the cold, she thought, that's why I can't process this as fast as I should, deal with it as it deserves – the pain wasn't helping, her nails digging into her palms as she clenched her hands, willing herself to strike out. The knife, the fucking knife, she thought bitterly.

"I don't belong to you," she half-whispered fiercely, her eyes narrowing up at him. "I'm no-one's _property_."

"You're mine because I say you are," he said flatly, and now his other hand was gripping her shoulder with an intensity that belied the calm in his voice. "You know it as well as I do. Soon Marone will know it, and every bloody dago and thug he has under him. Don't lie and say you don't get it."

She had a sick feeling in her gut when she looked up at him. He was perfectly right, of course – once it was known that the Joker had laid claim to her, she'd have an incredibly hard time pretending otherwise. He was behaving like a territorial animal at its worst. She wondered if it was for Marone's benefit. She had made a mistake, a stupid mistake when she'd let him kiss her. Fine, so she'd kissed him back, she thought, trying to focus, her eyes on the floor as he slid his hand down her arm and to her back. That didn't give him possession of her, nor the right to touch her as he pleased, to pull her to him suddenly with hands that felt like bands of steel..

"You don't scare me," she said, mouth set in a defiant line. He considered her tight face for a long moment, lingering on the tense eyes. Then he pulled her head back further and took her mouth, forcing it open ruthlessly. He was greedy, destructive, taking, but then halfway through his pace slowed and softened. Now he was asking, persuading, even pleading with her. Her hands were on his shoulders now, and the cold no longer mattered. Her rigid form relaxed, and slowly her lips blossomed under his. Reluctantly she let him take,was passive for him, and then she began to give a little. His hands tightened on her so painfully now that she gasped, and he broke off the kiss with a hoarse breath.

"Say it," he said harshly, his breathing loud and laboured. His fingers did not ease, and her knees began to go limp a little. He still held her up, his hair brushing her ears, and she bit her lip involuntarily. "Say it. Say you're mine."

"I'm not," she said shakily, looking away over his shoulder at nothing, and he shook her like a rag doll.

"Say it," he demanded again, and he kissed her harder to prove his point. She clutched him tighter, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps, and her head fell back. "You're mine. You belong to me, and I'll kill any other man who touches you or even fucking looks at you," he said, eyes roving over her bared jawline and neck hungrily. She closed her eyes. "Say it, damn you!" he growled fiercely into her ear, forcing her face closer to his. Her eyes opened, but they were dazed and unfocused.

"I'm yours," she breathed, her mind slipping in and out of consciousness with the pain. His strong fingers didn't loosen, she'd have bruises for sure, she thought incoherently through the haze. Now he was letting go of her arms, stooping to her knees to pick her up and carry her through to her bedroom and throw her down on her bed, where she landed with a soft thump. The relief only lasted for a second until he was on top of her, her mind clouding with the things he was doing to her. Absolutely helpless, she let him turn her mind inside out. He was brutal, enjoying making her bend to him. But at the end, he was the one begging for her, his eyes wild when he gasped her name. When they slept, he was still lying half on top of her, his face buried in the hollow of her neck and shoulder. She didn't move till morning. Then the crisp linen sheets rustled with the rain-cooled wind and she stretched, opening her eyes to find him propped up on his elbows above her, watching her inscrutably. A long finger rested on her temple, registering the pulse that beat there. Outside, the storm-coulds were more massively banked than ever.


	8. Chapter 8

Her eyelids flickered, registering his closeness. He was leaning over her, and over his shoulder she saw the grey morning light advancing slowly through the room. The fine white linen curtains billowed and flapped in the wind, and the chill made her pull the sheet tighter around herself. He shifted obligingly, eyes not leaving her face, but she couldn't look at him.

"What time is it?" she asked, eyes firmly averted. Her voice sounded odd – hoarse, somewhat choked. She extracted one arm from under the sheets to pick up her Blackberry from the bedside table. "Six-thirty," he said, before she'd glanced at the display. Without a reply she began scrolling through her texts and then calls. He was still watching, but she'd be damned if she let him unnerve her. Pulling the sheet tighter around her, she swung her legs out of bed and was about to get up. But before she could as much as prop herself up on her elbows, he was looming over her, his arms caging her in so she couldn't leave. Even a well-placed shove couldn't dislodge him, and she fell back among the pillows with a little huff of exasperation. "I have work to get to," she told him expressionlessly.

He didn't answer, just hooked his hand under her knee and hauled her legs back on the bed. In the morning, his face looked both worse and less terrifying than the night before. There were charcoal smudges on her pillows – and probably on her skin – but the skin of his shoulders and his back felt good, so good to her. Unbidden, she ran her fingers down his chest and watched his eyes flicker closed briefly. Mildly, she said, "And now what?"

"Hmm?" he murmured, eyes still closed. He lowered his head to her neck, grazing her skin with his teeth. The chill in the air was delicious, she thought, and she stretched lazily in momentary bliss. So much work to do, she thought, consciously ignoring the sharp jab of apprehension about the future. She picked up her Blackberry and placed a call.

"Broxton Trading?" she asked, her voice muted yet entirely alert. "Mr. Abbey, please."

He splayed his fingers wide open on the arced curve of her belly and looked up at her intently.

"Yes, good morning. We're supposed to meet at ten? I had a minor query about the storage spaces. About the actual square area, and also former insurance documents if possible. Yes, I know."

His hands came up to grip her elbows, dominating her space. But her eyes were focused elsewhere, her attention on the phone. She hardly saw the beginnings of his scowl.

"Yes thank you, I'll email you the confirmation as well. Nine. All right. See you soon. Have a nice day. I beg your pardon? Yes. Thank you, you too. Goodbye."

She hung up. Five seconds later she was speaking to someone else, about arrangements for shipping. Then there was an email to forward and a schedule planner to check. She made notations, trying to blank him out as thoroughly as possible as he lay beside her, now staring up at the ceiling contemplatively as she sat up cross-legged on the bed, Blackberry tucked into her shoulder as she typed rapidly on her laptop. The sheet she was using to cover herself trailed down to her waist, leaving most her back bare. The tendrils of her bed-tossed hair curled over her shoulder-blades, tickling her back whenever she shifted. And her cool, methodical voice went on at regular intervals, calmly organizing what promised to be a productive if harried day. He waited.

At almost seven, she hung up with someone and turned over her shoulder to look at him. "Would you like some coffee?" she asked, as politely as if he hadn't spent the night leaving his mark on every inch of her. His eyes were fixed on the sky outside, watching the storm-clouds build over the river. The view was spectacular, and her eyes followed his gaze too. The massive moss-covered trunk of the oak-tree outside her window shaded most of her bedroom balcony too, the overhanging branches draping the small alcove outside her room with the fresh scent of dew on leaves. Through the leaves you could see the rainwashed city streets, the tree-lined avenues, and from high up here, the river in the distance. Today everything looked grey and yet oddly light and clean.

"Do you really think you can just blank me out?' he asked. It was a deceptively mild question, no anger there. Yet. She looked at him steadily. His hands were folded on his chest, like the most patient of saints. He was still looking at the grey river.

"I have to leave in an hour," she replied, carefully not looking at either her laptop or her phone. He transferred his gaze from the middle distance to her face. "You can't stay here after that."

He didn't answer that, just idly kicked his sheets off and swung out of bed. She watched him lope out of the room without a word. Sounds of splashing came through the open bathroom door. She got out of bed herself and went to make coffee. When she came back, holding two fragrant, steaming mugs, he was sitting on the edge of her bed, buttoning his shirt. He looked up when she came in, and she halted abruptly.

His make-up was gone, his face scrubbed clean of the cheap paint. And his hair was damp and stringy, but noticeably brown. With astonishment she noticed that the ends were actually a little curly. He looked wary, but held her gaze steadily enough. She set the coffee mugs down with hands that trembled just a little, and he stood to face her, shaking his wet hair out of his face. She noticed that he'd picked her clothes from last night off the floor and dumped them on a chair. Somehow, this struck her as absurdly touching.

She gestured vaguely towards the mugs, not knowing what to say. And he only stood there, his hands stuffed in his pockets in an oddly defiant way, staring her down. He shrugged.

"Take me as I am," he said offhandedly, making a joke of it. But it was a question, she thought, it must be, otherwise he wouldn't watch her like he was waiting for her to say or do something in reply. Carefully she smoothed her hands down the side of her silk robe, trying to figure it out. Decisions, decisions, she thought. She gave him a tentative half-smile, lifting a hand to brush her hair back out of her face. His scarred cheeks creased too, but only slightly. His eyes fell on her arm, and as he registered the bruising there, his expression grew still more watchful.

"Does it hurt?' he asked, voice giving nothing away as he gestured to the marks of his fingers. She shook her head mutely, not wanting to rush into speech. He looked away, down at the laptop still on the bed, then at the floor. She walked over to him, standing squarely in front of him till he was forced to look directly at her. Then she raised her hand to trace his scars. He looked at her steadfastly while she did so, not moving, not touching her, not doing anything.

"Do I repulse you?" he asked, so matter-of-factly that she hardly registered the relief in his expression when she laughed and said no, of course not, quite the opposite, but it was time he left.

He put his hands on her arms, holding her away from him. His mouth twisting, he said, "I meant it, you know. If anyone else touches you, I _will_ kill them."

She nodded gravely, hands fingering the collar of his shirt. "I know," she said. She reached up on tiptoe to brush her lips against the scarred corner of his mouth. "None of that matters."

He kissed the top of her head briefly. "I'll see you soon,' he said. She nodded again. Then he let go of her and she heard him walk out of the apartment. With presumably the same keys he used to get in, she thought, trying to suppress a sudden glad feeling that kept cropping up most disconcertingly. Oh, christ. She shook herself vigorously. And now to _work._


	9. Chapter 9

The day passed in a frenzy of busyness, marked by her extreme dependence on her bloody was constantly on the move, her only break came when she went to a Prada fitting and they let her stand and stare vacantly at the floor in absolute silence and stillness, running over the things she had to do in her head while they put silk then taffeta then chiffon then silk on her. She posed mechanically, just barely registering the end of the session when people started packing up. She could have focused much better if he hadn't been at the back of her mind so much, staring at her with those ridiculous brown curls hiding his face. Damn it, damn it all. She stalked outside, putting her shades on. A man was waiting outside her car.

"Esa," she said, amiably enough. "Good to see you."

He gave her a tight smile. "Boss wants to see you," he said stiffly. He jerked his head at his own car, an imposing sedan. "Now."

Her forehead creased. "He could've just called," she remarked, sliding into her car seat. Simultaneously the two cars sped out on to the avenue. Ray followed Esa's car uptown for a while before she realized that they were going to Marone's house, not the offices. Worry began to nag at her.

Salvatore Marone's house was like him – sleek, polished, expensive and bearing all the signs of success. She was shown into an extensive foyer, sinking into the well of comfort that was the giant couch. Marone took his time coming over to greet them, pouring drinks for her and Esa on his way. He gave her a vodka, and in return she proffered him a politely enquiring smile. He jerked his head at Esa.

"Get out," said Marone. Within less than a minute, the massive room was empty. Only she remained, calmly sipping at her drink while he towered over her.

"I got a call this morning," he began slowly. "From the Joker."

She took another sip of her vodka.

"He told me to stay away from you, Ray," said Marone. "Please, explain to me why he would do that."

She met his gaze stonily. "Damned if I know," she said. He grimaced.

"Of course you know," he nearly spat. "The first minute he saw you, he decided to have you. Tell me, how was I supposed to know _you'd_ be that stupid?"

She shrugged. He considered her for a long moment.

"You know what's going to happen after this, Ray," he said, and suddenly he sounded tired. "Gotham's at war with the Joker, and so is the Mob. Don't be stupid. He'll only get you killed."

If he doesn't kill you himself first. The words were there, hanging unsaid but loud in the air. Ray winced.

"He's just playing," she said, watching the light reflect off the rim of her glass. "He'll get bored of it after a while." As she said the words, she knew they were most likely true. That didn't make her excuses any less lame, though, and they both knew it.

Marone looked angry and exhausted, both. "You know you can't work for me anymore," he said tersely. She dipped her head somberly. "You wouldn't trust me," she said without inflection. "I quite understand."

There was an odd silence, then Marone swore violently and got to his feet, tossing off his own drink in a single gulp. "Do what you want, then," he said curtly, and strode out of the room.

Ray took that as a signal to leave, finishing her drink on the way out. She steered her car towards the highway, driving to the docks. She needed to get on with her work, clear up Marone's last assignments before she quit altogether. She felt exhilarated, free. She didn't need to carry the burden of paranoia that went with that job anymore, for one thing. And he'd spoken to Marone, _told_ him of his right of possession over her. She smiled involuntarily, then checked herself. You're no silly teenager to daydream about a man, she told her reflection in the rearview mirror sternly. No matter that she'd never felt this way about a man before (did that mean that she was pathologically attracted to homicidal types? How disconcerting) she couldn't afford to let her feelings rule her head. She _knew_ he was using her for something, knew it in the same way that a rat knows there are predators on the street at eveyr moment. And she'd use him back, she decided with a rare feeling of self-satisfaction. If he was going to trumpet his claim on her through the streets of Gotham, she'd damn well make sure she validated it.

Later in the evening, she stepped out of her elevator cautiously, her hand in her pocket closed tightly over the safety of her revolver. It was because she didn't trust his mood, she told herself, but deeper than that, it was because she would probably never know when he decided to just end matters, and by implication her, too. But nothing happened. She walked in, and as before, he was leaning against the counter. This time he was fiddling with his knife. But he slid it easily inside his jacket pocket when he saw her, crossing one leg over the other as he watched her take her coat off. She returned his scrutiny sardonically, her mood made unpleasant by her distrust of him.

"Honey, I'm home," she said ina singsong voice. The corner of his mouth twitched.

He straightened slowly. Something in her chest ached to see him. Oh god, she was going to _hate_ killing him. But what else could she possibly do?

"What are you thinking?" he asked. She smiled in dismissal, shrugging lightly. "Turn the TV on," she said, tossing her laptop aside. "I want to go braindead for a while."

He loped over and turned the plasma screen on. There was a football game on, and so they watched it together in silence for almost two hours, neither of them really seeing it at all. At one point she got up and came back with hot food, soup and bread that she'd made freshly. Watching him eat, methodical and extremely thorough, she noticed that he finished everything, as if uncertain of when he'd get to eat next. He had the look of someone who'd had to fight for damn well everything he'd ever had. With a sudden stab of compunction, she got up to get him more food, which he finished just as fast. What did he do with all his money, apart from burn it or feed it to dogs? With a wry twist of the mouth she took his plate away, and when she came back she ruffled his washed hair. He'd left off the paint for good, she hoped, as he looked up at her with black, finely drawn eyes. Catching her hand, he twined his fingers through hers and pulled her down to the couch. They watched the rest of the game like that, with his arm looped around her shoulder. At some point she laid her head on his shoulder, and went to sleep leaning against him. His thumb caressed her cheek rhythmically as she breathed deeply, his eyes unfocused as he watched the TV throughout the night and till dawn broke. When he left she hardly noticed. All she remembered was that her last waking thought had been to think of a way to separate him from his knife, so that when she shot him down he wouldn't be able to put up any kind of struggle. She might miss him, though, but she wouldn't lose any sleep over him. Probably.


	10. Chapter 10

Ahem. Dear reader. There is no point my writing here anymore. I'll continue writing this as I am, obviously, but henceforth I'm probably going to forward the latest chapters to my own email list of interested people. If you want to hear the rest of the story, please leave your email id in my message box. Review if you feel like, but within the end of June. That's when I'll take my account down. If you like what you've been reading so far, thank you very much, and I look forward to sending you the gang-war, psycho-trip and retirement home parts of the story soon. If not, please continue on with your life, a minute of which has already been wasted as you read this page.

Regards,

Me


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